


I came here so you'd come for me

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Season/Series 02, Sexual Content, Ward x Simmons Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:44:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4745108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grant's dreams are not his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I came here so you'd come for me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for wardsimmonsdays on tumblr's theme: sleep
> 
> Title comes from Halsey's "Haunting," which I might as well have listened to on repeat while writing this for how well it works.

Grant fingers the bandage on the inside of his wrist. It’s not nearly as impressive as the gauze that wrapped around his entire forearm last time. He’s kind of disappointed in himself for the poor showing.

He can practically feel the eye of the camera watching him - or maybe that’s just paranoia rearing its ugly head after weeks trapped down here - and carefully smooths the corner of the bandage back into place. Coulson said if he starts picking at these stitches like he did the last ones, he’ll be strapped down until they come out.

They must’ve given him something other than just the ICER to make sure he stayed under. He’s groggy and has trouble keeping his eyes open. It’s important to keep himself to a fixed schedule down here, otherwise he’ll lose all track of time and then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to really going crazy. That means no sleeping until it’s night - even if he can’t _see_ the night. 

He keeps himself awake for as long as possible, at first by pacing his cell and then, when he can’t make his feet move anymore, he sits on the edge of his bed, mentally listing off facts and plans and reexamining memories of past altercations. He spends a lot of time on the fight with May, what he could’ve done differently, but there’s not much that would’ve let him beat her. He’ll need to be better than he is when he faces her again.

When his internal clock tells him night’s finally here, he sinks gratefully onto the mattress and is asleep before he even has the blanket fully over him.

He’s always had vivid dreams. Comes with the territory. Specialists are trained to notice details and that means his subconscious knows better than to try tricking him with a half-formed locale. All his dreams happen in places he’s been. Sometimes they’re piecemeal - a house with the Bus’s lounge and a yard that’s the field he and Buddy called home - but they’re always familiar.

This place isn’t.

It’s a hallway. Concrete floor and walls - brick down at the end where there’s a faded symbol painted. It’s not the SHIELD eagle, not quite. Other than that, there’s nothing of interest around here except the doors. All closed tight, but he’s standing in front of one in particular. There’s an 043 stenciled at about eye height and a big, yellow smiley face sticker curling up on one edge beneath it.

When he sees the number, he knows, suddenly in that dream way, that he’s been in the other rooms. Probably not all forty-two, but a few of them. He looks back and the hallway’s not that dull grey anymore. There’s a trail of blood shining on the floor. It’s tacky on his hands and he’s holding a kitchen knife in one fist.

He’s been busy.

Room 043 is open when he looks to it again and a brief curiosity has him suddenly inside the regulation quarters. They’re well lived-in, the kind that an agent hunkers down and keeps instead of just spending a night or two in while waiting on a new assignment. There’s a dresser and a bookshelf. Photos on the wall held up with more stickers. The desk is overflowing with open books and files and a tablet in danger of falling off one corner. And there’s someone in the bed, unnaturally still while she fakes sleep.

Grant gasps awake.

His arm hurts and he presses the heel of his hand into the bandage, using the pain to ground him. He doesn’t want to fall asleep again.

He’s had dreams before where he played the big, bad nightmare, but never one like this. The hallway he could blame on the meds, but Simmons? That was definitely her in the bed, eyes screwed shut like she was trying to will the boogeyman away. But she didn’t look like the Simmons he knew on the Bus. Her hair was shorter.

It’s been years since he dreamed someone looking any different from how he knows them. Maybe- maybe he can blame that on the drugs too, but he’s not so sure. There was too much wrong, too much that just didn’t feel like-

Surprise has him letting up some of the pressure on his forearm. It didn’t feel like it was his dream.

 

 

* * *

 

 

All it takes is a weighty glance in Trip’s direction and he’s abandoning his breakfast to follow her.

“Tell me he didn’t,” he says, falling into step.

“I don’t know,” Jemma sighs and knows she sounds as tired as she feels. “But the bandage was definitely discolored on the security feed.”

Warm fingers curl around her elbow, pulling her to a stop. It’s not a harsh touch - he’d probably let her go if she kept walking - and the look he’s giving her is just as gentle. “You still check in every morning?”

“I have to.” There’s no other explanation for it. She just _has to_ look in on him or she can’t get up and go about her day. If she doesn’t know for certain that he’s still down there, locked away…

“He’s not getting out,” Trip says.

There’s a joke to be made about him reading her mind, but it would be admitting too much to say so. Instead she calls on Coulson’s lessons on dissembling and misdirection to say, “But he is getting worse. His behavior is increasingly erratic, his speech sometimes disjointed-”

“It’s an act.”

“One he’s apparently willing to play out to its end - or his.” She wraps her arms around herself and his hand falls away. “We only found him the first time because I was checking in. If I hadn’t, if I’d waited five minutes-”

“Would that have been such a bad thing?”

Jemma looks away. She can’t exactly disagree. She doesn’t know how to reason through this. That’s a person down there, a life, and don’t they have a responsibility - doesn’t _she_ have a responsibility - to protect that? But at the same time it’s Ward’s life. He’s a monster, a murderer. He’s unquestionably deranged - was long before he was locked away. His death would rob them of a source of intel - a _potential_ source, as he’s refused to give them anything until they give him face-time with Skye - but it would also protect them. Would it have been so bad if she’d looked in five minutes later? If she’d _waited_ five minutes even?

“Fine, you’re right,” Trip sighs. “We’re better than he is, take the higher ground, whatever. But if he ever gets out of there, I am shooting him and I don’t even wanna hear you complaining.”

She turns away, regretfully, knowing it leaves him uncomfortable as they resume their journey to the lower levels. Unfortunately her skill for lying hasn’t yet developed enough that she could successfully reassure him that her silence isn’t over his callousness regarding Ward, without at the same time giving away that it’s because of her own.

They both have access to Vault D and enter easily. After that is when it becomes more difficult. The barrier is transparent because of his suicide attempt yesterday - they need 360 degree views of him just in case he tries something again - and he pins them with that dark gaze the second they step inside.

Pins _her_ , more accurately. He isn’t quite surprised to see her, more like someone who expects all his friends to be hiding in his living room and so is satisfied rather than shocked when they all burst out at him with cake and streamers.

“Simmons,” he says, and she has the discomfiting feeling there’s more in that one word than she realizes. “Trip,” he adds, the satisfaction giving way to a smile. “It’s good to see you both.”

Trip makes an unflattering noise. “Whatever. Coulson’s out of town, so you get us. Show us your wrist.”

Ward obediently lifts the bandaged wrist to them and, sure enough, it’s bloody. Has been for hours from the color.

Jemma sighs ruefully. “Take the bandage off, please.” She bites her tongue on the automatic pleasantry, but Ward doesn’t seem to notice. He carefully tugs the bandage away, revealing the bloody mess she expects. She’ll need to get closer to see if he’s burst any of the stitches, but - she glances to the line on the floor - with the barrier transparent upon their arrival, she has the gut-twisting fear that it’s actually down and Ward only waiting for the chance to attack.

A crackle of energy and shimmer in the air startle her.

“It’s still up,” Ward says, curling the knuckles of his uninjured arm in. From the sound of it, it likely hurts to touch.

Jemma grits her teeth and steps forward, while Ward mirrors her movements, holding his arm as close to the barrier as he can without activating it and distorting her view. He’s definitely pulled at least one of the stitches and the cut might actually have gotten worse as a result.

“I’ll need to restitch it,” she says. Behind her, Trip curses.

They could knock Ward out for the procedure, but after yesterday, Jemma’s become concerned that he’ll develop a tolerance to the ICERs - he was definitely more responsive than he should have been and had to be doubly sedated. It was a dangerous decision, and while she was able to justify it when Agent Mullis was working alongside her, she can’t do so now.

With the barrier reestablished - no reason to let Ward listen in - she and Trip agree to allow Ward to stay awake. It’s a simple procedure, local anesthetic, and will be done in a quarter of an hour if all goes to plan. Trip may - and will, if the firm set of his jaw is any indication - keep his gun trained on Ward the entire time.

Ward is surprised by the news, but readily agrees that he won’t try anything. He sits obediently on the floor in front of the barrier and Jemma brings the chair over so that she can sit directly in front of him. The disparity in their positions will make it more difficult - though far from impossible - for him to attack her successfully through the narrow shaft Trip opens in the barrier, but he doesn’t seem inclined to try. He gives her his hand without having to be asked and she sets to work cleaning the wound to better see what needs to be done.

“I’m sorry,” he says once she’s begun resuturing.

She can’t help but pause, midway through knotting the first stitch. That’s the first time he’s ever said that, that she knows of.

He keeps those big, puppy dog eyes fixed firmly on her face. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Ah, of course. For the stitches. Not for nearly killing her or anything. Why would he ever apologize for that?

She goes back to work.

“You didn’t either.”

She nearly causes more damage than what she’s trying to fix. He smiles a little weakly, his eyes not on hers, but on the dark rings she tried so hard to cover up this morning.

Her mouth goes dry as she remembers the dream. It’s a common nightmare - one of her few that doesn’t involve heights or water - and it’s just bad luck that he is the key player. The line of the barrier, the only thing that keeps him locked up here, is beneath her feet and the bright lines of the still-active portion shimmer on either side of her knees. He could slip through that gap. He could kill her, kill Trip, go upstairs and kill-

No one. The door is secure. He won’t be getting out, even if he does kill the two of them. Her nightmare will _not_ become a reality.

“I’m sorry if I had anything to do with that.”

She adjusts her grip on his arm and finishes the next stitch. Trip guessing her thoughts is one thing. Ward guessing them is simply not acceptable. She suddenly hates their positions. It makes it impossible for her to hide her face from him.

“There was an 084 yesterday,” she hears herself saying. “You, while annoying, were an expected annoyance. If anything, _it_ was to blame.”

He hums low in his throat. “Probably.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

That night, Grant has the dream again. Hallway. Blood. Knife. 043. This time he doesn’t go in right away, he walks up and down the hall just to prove to himself to can.

He’s sure, after seeing Simmons today, that this is her dream. Could’ve been anyone’s - Fitz and Trip, he could easily see having nightmares where he murders her in her bed - but her confession that she’d slept badly and had contact with an 084 on the same day she worked on him, only confirmed that it was probably hers.

He steps into her room because even if he’s not stuck in her script, that doesn’t mean he should go around rocking the boat. But he _is_ stuck on how to move forward, how to play a _dream_ to his advantage.

His play for Skye’s sympathy is at a standstill until Coulson gets desperate enough to send her down, and whatever Simmons’ reasons for keeping him conscious today, he’s not about to count on that kind of treatment in the future. Getting to talk to her, even with Trip holding a gun on him the whole time (what? Did he think he was gonna _kill_ her? Use her as a hostage? And what would that get him besides a bullet in the skull? Maybe these suicide attempts are working better than he thought) was a rare victory in his fight to get back in the team’s good graces.

But, he thinks suddenly, it was only second to the victory of touching her. He hasn’t had human contact in weeks and having Simmons cradle his numbed arm in her lap left his skin buzzing for hours afterward. He almost couldn’t talk for it, had to keep himself perfectly still on the cold floor or risk losing focus and grabbing her like some caveman.

Her fist tightens around the edge of the blanket while she fakes sleep - she’s a terrible liar even in her dreams - and he’s reminded that he has to do something here, or risk losing his advantage by exposing it. He’s not gonna kill her though, so he sets the knife on her desk and takes a seat by her hip.

“Hey, honey, I’m home,” he says. The cliché just slips out the moment it pops into his head - damn dreams - and Simmons’ eyes snap open. Her whole face twists in confusion, like a preschooler trying to figure out a multiplication problem. Her head turns on the pillow and he follows her gaze to see the bloody knife has been replaced with a jacket.

He reaches out to brush her hair away from her face. He means it to be a brief gesture, but apparently touching her in a dream is as heady as touching her in real life. He can’t help that his knuckles keep smoothing over the same spot, touching more and longer on each pass until she looks at him. The turn of her head buries his fingers in her hair and he uses the excuse to cup her head as he kisses her.

It’s a dream, right? So it’s not exactly a surprise that she kisses him back or that it’s a great kiss. Her nails are pleasantly sharp at the back of his neck and her knees scissor next to him, dragging that quilt of hers lower. The pajamas she was wearing have already disappeared like they never were, and he palms the smooth skin of her breasts beneath his rough hands. He kisses his way down her neck, eager to touch every inch of her he can. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to accomplish anymore, he just wants to _feel_ her.

She guides him to a spot between her breasts that makes her breath shudder out of her when he sucks at it. She’s gasping, head thrown back already, and he wonders how long it’s been since _she_ touched anyone - like this anyway. Maybe Fitz didn’t get up the balls to tell her after all.

He pulls her hands away from his body, lacing their fingers and pressing her hands to the pillow. She arches up into him, eager, ready. She’s warm and willing beneath him and that’s all he cares about. It’s been months and he’s going crazy from isolation, if he can be with her, be inside her, maybe that won’t be so bad tomorrow.

She’s squirming, trying to force friction against his knee while he gives her breasts the attention they deserve, but all at once it stops. She’s cold and hard under him and his hands are wet.

He must let her go because she scrambles back against her headboard, her arms red from the blood trailing down his. She stares at him, eyes wide in horror, and screams.

His eyes open on the dark grey of his ceiling. “Damn,” he mutters.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jemma feels some small relief when her subconscious opens things up on the bottom of the ocean the next night. She’s not exactly aware of it at the time, but this is one dream that does not, at any point, include Grant Ward.

Worse than the lingering fear that had her checking on each of the others before breakfast that morning, worse than the phantom feel of blood on her hands that sent her to the shower when she woke up with her own scream caught in her throat, was the longing. She cried and cursed while the water ran down her back and her fingers worked inside her folds, bringing her to a disquieting, if satisfying, climax.

So the relief is natural, if short-lived.

This dream is less horrifying than the other, but no less emotionally devastating. In it, Fitz _always_ confesses his feelings for her, and she _always_ stands there, silent. The minutes and hours drag on and on and she can’t say a single thing. She doesn’t know what to say.

And there’s nowhere to go, only the four walls of the med pod and the ocean bearing down on them. Sometimes the dream breaks and she makes her escape, but it never helps. Fitz dies in her arms or slips from her grasp or appears to her as an accusing ghost while she stands vigil over his hospital bed or casket.

He stares at her now, somehow both hopeful and furious. The weight of it is worse than the ocean pressing down on her and she falls back a step, searching for the steady strength of the wall. She knows she’ll never reach it, just as the distance between her and Fitz will never grow.

But for the first time there is a shadow by the door, one that comes into view as she moves, and her breath catches in her throat. She knows who it is without looking.

Fitz doesn’t seem to notice. He doesn’t see anything at all except her and she feels herself being swallowed up by his gaze. She cringes back, apologies she can’t force past her lips clogging up her throat. She can’t breathe.

Strong hands grip her arms and her vision goes black, not from unconsciousness but because there’s a dark t-shirt in front of her and a hand holding her head to the chest it’s currently hanging on. The fingers dig into her hair, kneading gently. They’re familiar and each solid brush of knuckles against her skull has a faint, answering warmth pooling in her belly.

“You’re okay,” Ward says. He’s a traitor, a liar. He tried to kill her. But it’s so easy to let him comfort her.

Water is everywhere, soaking through her clothes, dragging at her feet, filling her lungs.

Someone shakes her, brings her sputtering to the surface. “Simmons!”

They’re alive. She’s alive. Ward came after her and the antiserum worked.

He brushes her hair from her face, smiling in relief. She smiles too, so wide it hurts. It hurts! She can still feel pain because she’s still _alive_! She wants to laugh, but the bubble of it bursts in her throat when Ward kisses her. It’s fast, but sends a wave of heat all the way to her toes. He hugs her to him.

“You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She hugs him back, wondering which of them was more afraid during that fall.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Simmons has three recurring nightmares. There are minor and major variations to each, but they all fall into one of three categories.

Falling from the Bus, which can be anything from a never-ending fall to not making it off the Bus before she blows and then watching the others go through the entire course of the disease while the plane takes forever to hit the ground.

Fitz confessing his love (he _did_ get up the guts, apparently) and then hating her for not returning his feelings, not saving his life, or both.

And Grant killing everyone she loves, then coming for her. That’s the one he knows the least about, since he never lets it go very far without his interference.

He doesn’t know what her regular dreams are like. He doesn’t get to see those. That probably says something about him - or her. He wonders if there’s someone else who visits her in them and feels an unexpected wave of jealousy.

It doesn’t matter. He’s winning her over. Most nights end in her pushing him away, but every once in a while she’s too lost in the dream to remember she hates him. Every time he pulls her away from Fitz or saves her from the fall or just lets her cry on his shoulder, she accepts it a little more. And every time she has the bedroom dream, she lets him get a little bit farther.

He always has the knife when it starts though, and he’s torn between hope and annoyance that there might be a variation where there’s no knife, no murders, where she accepts him readily into her bed, but he doesn’t get to see it because it’s not a nightmare.

He considers changing his play, but asking for her over Skye would be suspicious. He might be able to justify it with a real medical problem, but they padded his walls after he started running at them, and that was his last reasonably safe avenue. Anything else he might try is more likely to result in his death than not, and he’s not willing to go quite that far, so he keeps his daytime routine the same, and hopes Simmons has had a sufficiently stressful day that he’ll be welcomed into her subconscious at night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A man was murdered today. _In the labs_. He was spying for another faction of HYDRA and was dealt with quickly. Anyone else, the guard - the _executioner_ \- said while the man’s blood still poured from his chest, who was found funneling secrets, would not be so lucky.

HYDRA is full of monsters. When she goes to bed that night, she knows there will be one in her dreams.

She hoped that going into the lion’s den would cure her of this, that new nightmares would replace the old and her mind would let go of this disquieting image of Ward as her white knight. She knows now, as she lies in bed, eager for sleep, that it’s only a strange method of self-defense. 

She hears him in the hall outside her quarters in the Playground. She knows he’s escaped the vault. She knows he’s killed all the others while she remained in her bed, frozen by fear.

None of it feels real, even for a dream. There’s an anticipation, an eagerness, buzzing beneath her skin. She isn’t afraid when he stands watching her, his eyes boring through the thin blanket like he knows what she looks like underneath. She no longer expects the press of the knife, still warm from Skye’s blood, or the cold greeting that used to come.

“Hey, baby,” he says while his weight settles next to her on the mattress. She hated the endearment. The first time it appeared here, she found herself rolling her eyes over it hours later. Now it has her curling towards him and smiling. “Sorry I’m late, mission ran long.”

He reaches for her and surprise colors his face when she sits up before he can reach her. She’s surprised too. Part of her is still horrified by all that’s happening here, but the rest of her - the majority of her - is tired, tired of fighting her own subconscious, and lonely so far from her friends. She sees Ward more than she sees them in her dreams these days. She doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

She kisses him, dragging her fingers through the short hairs at the back of his neck. If her subconscious is so determined to give her a little satisfaction that it’s offering up the most unavailable man she knows, one who will never again see the light of day and never looked at her twice, who is she to argue? Funny that Ward has become the safe man to pin her fantasies on.

His hands are rough against the sensitive skin of her waist and she pulls him down on top of her, into her. He makes her beg and plead and call him _Grant_ \- and it’s a relief because it means she hasn’t forgotten he’s a monster.

When she wakes up to her radio blaring, satisfaction lingers in her bones.

 


End file.
